Today at Apple
People love their iPhones, iPads, and Macs, yet many have only scratched the surface of what these devices can help them achieve—especially in creative areas like photography, music production, and art. Today at Apple is a series of interactive sessions offered at over 500 Apple stores worldwide, designed to empower and inspire customers to unlock their creativity.
Company
Apple
Year
2017
Product Opportunity
Build the digital discovery and booking platform for Today at Apple.
Key Product Requirements
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Develop a web landing page to serve as the digital home for Today at Apple. Ensure discoverability from key locations, including the Apple.com navigation menu, search, and the iOS Apple Store app.
Page should introduce users to the Today at Apple program and its offerings.
Enable browsing of available sessions by category, location*, and time.
Provide filters for key categories: photography, art, music, productivity, and basics.
Increase discoverability for high-profile events, such as one-time sessions featuring special guests, to ensure these events are prominently visible to users.
*Follow up update added the ability filter by group of nearby stores because we found that customers were willing to drive to further stores for preferred time or session.
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Give customers ability to RSVP for a session.
Integrate AppleID to streamline customer authentication as part of session reservation process and reduce the risk of fake or bot signups.*
Incorporate automated email strategy to improve attendance. All emails should prominently display event details, such as: what, where, and when. (e.g. confirmation, reminder, post-attendance “thank you” with recommendations for follow up sessions).
*We later enabled “Guest Signup” as a way to lower the friction of signing up (no password needed) and increase attendance. The risk of bot signups was resolved through other methods (limiting number of reservations by IP address, blacklist of email addresses, etc).
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Technical and design solution has to support 500+ stores, and 30 languages.
Create templates with images and descriptions to ensure a consistent landing page experience across all locations. This also allows store teams to focus more on managing event schedules.
Solution Highlight 1
Landing page
The apple.com/today landing page enables customers to browse categories and easily find individual sessions. The category slider serves a dual purpose: as an educational feature, it informs customers of the breadth of offerings, and as a navigational tool, it helps them filter options once they find something of interest.
All imagery and content are managed through a highly scalable, templated system. Store teams simply select the session time, and the system handles the rest.
Sessions scheduled at multiple stores are combined into a single tile with a "See times and locations" prompt. This detail was essential to prevent listing the same session multiple times, ensuring a streamlined and user-friendly experience.
Solution Highlight 2
Defining “nearby”
Location is a crucial factor in whether someone is interested in attending an event—they're far more likely to attend if it’s nearby. But how do we define "nearby"?
Our initial idea was simple: create a radius around each customer and show events within that range. However, this approach had several issues. Ten miles in Los Angeles traffic is very different from ten miles in rural Michigan, and store density varies greatly. In densely populated areas, the results could feel too broad, while sparse areas sometimes lacked options altogether.
After extensive discussions and working sessions, we developed a counterintuitive but effective solution: using a store radius instead of a customer radius.
By analyzing anonymized transaction data, we could see how far customers typically traveled to specific stores. This allowed our recommendation engine to align more closely with actual customer behavior. We also implemented special rules for edge cases—like the Las Vegas and Hawaii stores, where customers often travel thousands of miles, primarily due to tourism. Additionally, we limited cross-country results for those living near the U.S.-Canada border, knowing that most wouldn’t cross a border for a free event.
This approach led to a more relevant and personalized feed of event recommendations, significantly improving the user experience.
Solution Highlight 3
Scalable consistency
We developed content templates to ensure a cohesive, consistent experience across multiple customer touchpoints. These templates structured images, descriptions, and product details for uniform presentation across channels: the web (landing and store pages), the iOS Apple Store app, in-store tabletop displays, and even large LED video walls in select flagship stores.
While my primary responsibility was the web experience, I collaborated closely with downstream teams to create a seamless experience across all channels, as the web served as the main entry point where customers made reservations. Importantly, "consistent" did not mean "identical"—each touchpoint displayed session data in ways tailored to its unique context. This required us to adapt templates for specific variations, ensuring each touchpoint felt intuitive and relevant.
Results
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Award Winning
Digital product strategy and execution contributed to Grand Prix and Titanium Lions—the highest honors—at 2018 Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
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Successful scaled Launch
Tens of millions of visitors to digital products and millions of attended in-store events with zero outages or issues (note: exact numbers confidential).
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Happy Customers
A world-class NPS score of 81 from event attendees reflects strong customer satisfaction, with digital products playing a key role in driving this positive response.